The Record: Capital barbarism

FORTY-THREE minutes. That's how long it took the state of Oklahoma to kill death row inmate Clayton Lockett on Tuesday in a botched, inhumane execution that should be a clarion call to begin a conversation about ending capital punishment once and for all. At the very least, it is time for even those who favor the death penalty to admit that in its current form, it fails to meet the Constitution's standard against "cruel and unusual punishments."

According to The Associated Press, Lockett, a four-time felon convicted in the killing of a 19-year-old woman in 1999, writhed, clenched his teeth and appeared to struggle against his restraints before prison officials halted the execution. He died a short time later, from an apparent heart attack.

Department of Corrections officials in Oklahoma blamed the problems with the execution on a ruptured vein. Other critics pointed to a possible problem with the three-drug cocktail — including the sedative midazolam — which the state was trying for the first time in its lethal injection process. Florida has used 500 milligrams of midazolam in its three-drug combination for executions. Oklahoma officials used 100 milligrams of the drug on Lockett.

"They should have anticipated possible problems with an untried execution protocol," said Lockett's attorney, David Autry. "Obviously, the whole thing was gummed up and botched from beginning to end. Halting the execution obviously did Lockett no good."

Many death-penalty states are in a scramble to find reliable lethal injection combinations because drug makers — many based in Europe, where capital punishment is largely opposed — have stopped selling some drugs to U.S. prisons and corrections departments. In Ohio earlier this year, an execution lasted for nearly 25 minutes, with the inmate, Dennis McGuire, choking and gasping for breath on the gurney before dying. Ohio corrections officials were also trying midazolam in an untested combination.

Capital punishment is a practice out of the Dark Ages. It was ended in New Jersey in 2007, but according to the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center, 32 states, most of them in the Deep South and Midwest, still have the death penalty on the books, as do the federal government and the U.S. military.

There is no reason to continue this barbaric exercise in the 21st century, especially given its myriad shortcomings as anything approaching humane treatment. If repeal at the federal level is not politically possible, President Obama at least should call for a top-down review of capital punishment drug protocols, so as to keep another horrific episode like the one witnessed Tuesday in Oklahoma from repeating itself.